Why Mark Messier is Often Regarded the Worst/Most Hated Vancouver Canuck of All Time.

[quoipourquoi]

Hey look, fans of other teams telling Canucks fans how to feel, or that their feelings are not valid. How nice.

The captaincy, #11, these are really secondary things. Bottom line, He. Did. Not. Care.

What exactly is the issue in questioning the dislike for a player that is often justified with misinformation and contradictions by an admittedly emotional fanbase?

The Canucks had a bad hockey team before he showed up.
The Canucks had a divided locker room before he showed up.
The Canucks had poor management before he showed up.

The idea that someone who was the mastermind behind multiple trades that were beneficial to the team did not care is somewhat silly. At the very least, you know that Mark Messier cared about the Canucks because he had $6 million riding on the improvement of the franchise's value.

So you can say that He. Did. Not. Care. but I. Don't. Believe. You.

Because why would he go through all of the effort of giving the Canucks a makeover if he didn't care? What kinda sense does that make? He could have just played the same underwhelming 162 points in 207 GP dead puck hockey without attempting to usurp the throne and turn the Canucks into something resembling a team, which is what they became in 1999-2000.

Of course, we covered this territory last year too, when it was more than just an Oilers and a Rangers fan engaging with walls of one-sided newspaper research like the rest of us have done for years on the same damn subject.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

to oilers fan, rangers fan, whatever the hell disgruntled goat is, and guy who really likes teemu,

no one in vancouver wants to or cares to look at messier's career here objectively. how many times do i have to type "potvin sucks" in this thread? hating messier -- some deserved, some undeserved, a lot of it in grey areas between those two extremes -- is cultural. in the same way that yelling "potvin sucks" at MSG even when the islanders aren't playing and potvin retired more than 25 years ago is cultural.

scapegoat? absolutely. does anybody in vancouver care? absolutely not. linden is the most beloved canuck of all time; is he objectively the best? of course not. dougie gilmour, wendel clark, theo fleury, ryan smyth... when there is love for a player beyond objective measure, or in messier's case hate beyond objective measure, that's something special; that's where fandom happens, that's where sports become more meaningful than numbers and trophies, and what happens on the ice comes to transcend what happens on the ice and gain the power to bring people together, to express the hopes and dreams of cities and communities. you know, "five maurice richards against five other maurice richards." i mean, i guess you can ridicule that if you want, but then i kind of want to ask: why do you even like sports?

and not that you guys care, but i'll post it one more time. this is why hating messier matters in vancouver, whether or not random onlookers think it's reasonable. you ask "what the hell was canucks management thinking?" while pretending you're going to read an answer instead of belittling vancouver and its hockey fans for... being hockey fans, instead of being... objective historians?* well here's the answer you're free to continue to ignore:

i'd have started with him getting wayne maki's number, and maki's widow's press conference. in retrospect, it looks like a john mccaw play -- insisting that messier gets his signature number to sell jerseys -- not a demand by messier himself. but the complexity of the situation is that the lines between what we blame mccaw for, what we blame keenan for, and what we blame messier for is very blurry. maybe not 100% fair, but i think i speak for a lot of vancouver fans when i say that those three all were seen as the enemy infiltrating what canucks hockey, and its relationship to the community on multiple levels, meant.

to reflect on it 15 years later, with some larger manner of historical objectivity, we might also place a lot more blame on arthur griffiths, who now looks all the world like louis XVI or richard II (or jim buss). but back then, it was harder to see, as the legacy of frank griffiths sr., who died at the end of the '94 regular season and whose memory was always in the background of the '94 finals run, was still so omnipresent.

and one also has to remember that vancouver itself was rapidly changing at that time. the ethnic demographic of the city had changed over the five years leading up to '97 (when hong kong changed hands from britain to china). alongside that xenophobia, to say nothing of outright racial hostility (study your late 90s/early 2000s canadian politics if you really are interested), was an initial resistance to a seattle businessman buying the team from the griffiths family, who had deep deep community ties and who had owned the team since 1974. we had a new cookie-cutter corporate arena, a terrible NBA team sapping resources (and consequently we lost local heroes ronning and geoff courtnall to unrestricted free agency the year BEFORE messier got here), then we bring in all these new york guys... kind of an ugly paranoid period when you consider the role canadian nationalism and also sectarian western canadian nationalism plays in all of this. but a MUCH MUCH more complicated story than "old core was old, had to bottom out, congratulations you have naslund and bertuzzi and won one playoff round in 2003."

* and on the topic of historical objectivity, i don't think messier apologists absolving messier for being a giant suck because the team would have sucked anyway is a particularly rational or objective reason to throw rocks at our deeply-held messier-is-an-albertan-devil mythologies.

 

[Morgoth Bauglir]

when there is love for a player beyond objective measure, or in messier's case hate beyond objective measure, that's something special; that's where fandom happens

Far from seeing it as "something special", that's actually what I dislike the most about sports fandom.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

So you can say that He. Did. Not. Care. but I. Don't. Believe. You.

i don't know what to say man, except maybe watch the game tapes?

bertuzzi in '04 before steve moore didn't try. ryan kesler the second half of last season didn't try. vince carter his last year in toronto didn't try. dany heatley hasn't tried in years. and messier, for the vast majority of his time in vancouver, didn't try. if he cared, he certainly didn't care enough to try.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Far from seeing it as "something special", that's actually what I dislike the most about sports fandom.

yeah, but i actually like sports.

 

[Morgoth Bauglir]

yeah, but i actually like sports.

I love sports. I just don't care for 90% of sports FANS......at least when they're acting as sports fans.

 

[The Panther]

I agree with Morgoth. Passion for sports or for a team doesn't equal irrationality to the point of insulting people's intelligence. You might feel or say or even do something regrettable in the heat of the moment, on the battlefield (at the rink), but in the cold light of day typing at they keyboard, we should have enough sportsmanship and sense of fair-play to be mildly rational before carrying out a coldly calculated character-assassination.

This gif kind of shows how silly this thread was when it started and where it's now ended up:

 

[quoipourquoi]

to oilers fan, rangers fan, whatever the hell disgruntled goat is, and guy who really likes teemu,

no one in vancouver wants to or cares to look at messier's career here objectively.

Gee, I figured with the opening post saying "this is a purely informative piece meant to enlighten hockey fans on the influence of Mark Messier on the Vancouver Canucks", and then the first sentence saying Messier was "nothing short of a cancer to his team," I figured people should be able to respond to the one-sided information instead of just sitting on the sidelines saying, "Oh, those Vancouver fans... let's just let them do what they do under the guise of an informing the public."

It's ******** to suggest that people shouldn't bother offering counterpoints. This thread isn't the same as a "Potvin Sucks" chant because no one is suggesting that the "Potvin Sucks" chant is purely informative. Potvin doesn't suck, and Sonny Lamateena would never make a thread trying to convince people he does.

You want to pretend that Messier is the devil in pure fun? Go ahead, Vancouver fans; that's a cool, safe hobby for you guys. But this thread is trying to be something else. It's trying to show how Messier is, objectively, a cancer. Of course people are going to disagree.

 

[MS]

Another thread where people who weren't there try to Canuck fans what happened.

If you didn't follow this team on a day-to-day basis, it is simply impossible to comprehend how utterly bizarre the Messier/Keenan show was in 1997-98. You couldn't make it up if you tried.

The guy completely lost the plot and was acting as a playing associate GM while sitting courtside at NBA games with Keenan and the owner. His nightly press scrums sounded like something from the Iraqi Information Minister. It was just freaking weird.

i don't know what to say man, except maybe watch the game tapes?

bertuzzi in '04 before steve moore didn't try. ryan kesler the second half of last season didn't try. vince carter his last year in toronto didn't try. dany heatley hasn't tried in years. and messier, for the vast majority of his time in vancouver, didn't try. if he cared, he certainly didn't care enough to try.

His effort (or lack thereof) on the backcheck was something to behold.

You could watch entire games where he barely took a stride in anger coming back through the neutral zone. Would just be gliding back, behind the play as the last man, over and over again. It was a joke.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Gee, I figured with the opening post saying "this is a purely informative piece meant to enlighten hockey fans on the influence of Mark Messier on the Vancouver Canucks", and then the first sentence saying Messier was "nothing short of a cancer to his team," I figured people should be able to respond to the one-sided information instead of just sitting on the sidelines saying, "Oh, those Vancouver fans... let's just let them do what they do under the guise of an informing the public."

It's ******** to suggest that people shouldn't bother offering counterpoints. This thread isn't the same as a "Potvin Sucks" chant because no one is suggesting that the "Potvin Sucks" chant is purely informative. Potvin doesn't suck, and Sonny Lamateena would never make a thread trying to convince people he does.

You want to pretend that Messier is the devil in pure fun? Go ahead, Vancouver fans; that's a cool, safe hobby for you guys. But this thread is trying to be something else. It's trying to show how Messier is, objectively, a cancer. Of course people are going to disagree.

^ actually, everything jetsalternate posted, some of it hard and factual, some of it suggestive, some of it open to interpretation, is 100% informative as to "Why Mark Messier is Often Regarded the Worst/Most Hated Vancouver Canuck of All Time."

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

but with that said, and adding a parting shot that maybe the guy who is now crying "character assassination" on and poor sportsmanship perpetrated against his hockey idol is behaving less than rationally himself, i guess i'll show myself out now. (aww, who am i kidding, i'll get riled up again and yell at you guys again tomorrow.)

 

[JA]

Gee, I figured with the opening post saying "this is a purely informative piece meant to enlighten hockey fans on the influence of Mark Messier on the Vancouver Canucks", and then the first sentence saying Messier was "nothing short of a cancer to his team," I figured people should be able to respond to the one-sided information instead of just sitting on the sidelines saying, "Oh, those Vancouver fans... let's just let them do what they do under the guise of an informing the public."

It's ******** to suggest that people shouldn't bother offering counterpoints. This thread isn't the same as a "Potvin Sucks" chant because no one is suggesting that the "Potvin Sucks" chant is purely informative. Potvin doesn't suck, and Sonny Lamateena would never make a thread trying to convince people he does.

You want to pretend that Messier is the devil in pure fun? Go ahead, Vancouver fans; that's a cool, safe hobby for you guys. But this thread is trying to be something else. It's trying to show how Messier is, objectively, a cancer. Of course people are going to disagree.

I'd like to make a quick distinction:

Messier was a cancer in Vancouver. Nothing in this thread claims his personality was cancerous prior to him donning the Canucks' sweater (or even after). We know very well that players aren't always cancerous; it all depends on circumstances with a particular organization. A change of setting can alleviate the problem. Messier was not a cancer in Edmonton nor in his first stint with the Rangers; in fact, he helped them succeed. In Vancouver, he very much was cancerous for many of the reasons already discussed in this thread.

We've looked at testimony from players, revisited the culture that developed over that season with regards to the team, read analysis from members of the media, and even provided a contrast with Brian Burke's comments to illustrate the changes that occurred with his arrival.

The argument is not that the Canucks would have been a highly-successful team without Messier. The argument is that Messier made the team worse -- not just in terms of its place in the standings, but in its everyday conduct. He created an unpleasant aura around the team. His presence, especially in 1997-98, was detrimental to the Canucks as a franchise, and his actions were entirely inappropriate.

His control and authority over the team, in addition to his hypocrisy as the self-named "reformer" of the team, are what irk many fans. The organization imploded in 1997-98, particularly because of all of the controversies and damage Messier's presence and actions brought. It's quite easy to see why fans could not support the product. This ended when Brian Burke became the team's general manager; Burke (and Marc Crawford) brought some credibility and stability back to the organization. Though Messier's role was reduced in late 1998 to simply being a player again once Burke was brought in and the "management by committee + Messier" philosophy was discarded, his reputation in Vancouver by then had already been damaged severely and his presence continued to be detrimental to the fans' belief and trust in the organization. That said, he was no longer as much of a problem internally in spite of his continued poor play. By 2000, though, Burke had had enough and bought out Messier.

 

[The Panther]

his actions were entirely inappropriate.

Name one.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I have no idea why Messier did go to Vancouver, or why they pursued him. I'd be livid if the Leafs went out of their way to sign Daniel Alfredsson. Honestly, he would never go anything right in my eyes in a Leafs uniform. Even if he saved an orphanage from a burning building he would be despised in Toronto. And if he took the captaincy from Clark, Gilmour or even Sundin it would irritate us, even if it was offered. So I get why Canuck fans hate Messier.

That being said, why do people hold it against Messier for the team being poor? I asked this earlier, but when have you ever seen a 36 year old be the reason a team turned around? I can't think of it off the top of my head at all.

Maybe the Canucks management erred in bringing in Messier, but I think it's obvious why Messier came to the team - he did it for the $$$$. This was a soon-to-be 37 year old who had spent almost two decades playing a reckless style of hockey who had finally showed some serious signs of age in the second half of his last year in New York. The Canucks threw money at him, and he took it.

Here's an interesting article out of Vancouver particularly about the Canucks dressing room pre-Messier.
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2014/09/mark-messier-canuck-scapegoat/

Interesting. Kind of goes along with the one article I pulled out from earlier where Messier seemed dismayed by the regular leaks to the media.

 

[MS]

Name one.

Publicly throwing his coach under the bus?

Going to dinners and basketball games with the coach/acting GM and owner instead of his teammates?

Not always travelling with the rest of the team on the road, and instead taking days off at his complex in North Carolina?

 

[JA]

Of course, we covered this territory last year too, when it was more than just an Oilers and a Rangers fan engaging with walls of one-sided newspaper research like the rest of us have done for years on the same damn subject.

The evidence provided isn't one-sided at all. As this discussion is about his time in Vancouver, the articles provide a very in-depth look at the culture and politics surrounding the team at the time.

We have analyses from numerous reporters, and we have words from Messier himself. The evidence encompasses the controversies during the time. One would be very difficult to find any other side to the evidence.

I think many people here have forgotten that this is about Mark Messier the Vancouver Canuck; this is not a general criticism of Mark Messier. This is a look at the period from 1997 to 2000 in isolation with regard to Messier and his conduct. We are here to explore the period in which Mark Messier seemed to become something uncharacteristic of himself (or perhaps a hyperbolic version of himself). If we can remove ourselves from relating this period of Messier the individual with the periods prior, I think it becomes easier to rationalize and understand the problems. This was not Mark Messier the leader; this was Mark Messier the control freak, the self-proclaimed "Messiah." He was not just a shadow of his former visage; he was a parody of himself. I don't think we have to defend his reputation as an Oiler or Ranger; I think we all respect his time as a member of those organizations. We have to realize that he did a lot of wrong things in Vancouver. If his name was not Mark Messier, I don't think anyone would defend what he did. His approach to being a Canuck was unlike anything else. Perhaps it would make some of us happier to say that for those three years he was not Mark Messier.

 

[Steve Kournianos]

The Maki thing should be irrelevant. Same with the Linden captaincy.

Had the Canucks been a good team and challenged/won, the issues would have never come up.

Unless people can prove removing Linden as captain, and wearing the honored number of a player who passed somehow impacted the standings.

Canucks fans shouldn't like Messier because he declined and didn't lead them to the postseason. That's it.

Everything else is petty BS.

 

[Steve Kournianos]

Vancouver struck out on Gretzky in 1996. The ownership (the cell phone dude) wanted a big name in Vancouver with Canadian appeal and a winning track record.

Messier was shunned by the Rangers because Checketts fell in love with the way Gretzky captured the city and Messier had a poor playoff (by his standards - he was hurt).

The Rangers never called Messier. His father received offers from Detroit and Washington, with Washington's being 3/21.

Doug Messier then called Vancouver since Messier said he didn't want to play his old teammates 7 times a year with the Caps.

That's when Quinn and ownership went full-court press in their recruiting efforts.

Even still, Messier wanted to stay in NY. The Rangers leaked their offer as 10 million/ 2 years. After getting the 3/21 offer from Vancouver, Messier called Smith and wanted confirmation that the Rangers' 2/10 offer was still on the table.

Smith told him no. It was one year at 4.6 million. Massive lowball and disrespect. It crushed Messier.

That's why he became a Canuck. They wanted him and the Rangers didnt.

 

[Steve Kournianos]

As for Odjick's comments, Messier always had the reputation of a de facto coach/GM.

He didn't do it with Sather because Sather knew which buttons to push.

But in NY, Messier owned Smith. He couldn't own Neilson and it got him fired. Messier and Smith spent hours together. But who's going to stop him? It's Mark Messier!

I know it's cliche, but Messier demanded a lead-follow-or get out of the way mentality from his teammates.

Either be a leader like me, follow my lead through good and bad, or move the hell on.

But I don't think that team was fixable by one guy. Talent was poor. Very hard to achieve results without talent. Saying the losses were because of a guy's attitude is a knee-jerk cop out.

 

[JuniorNelson]

Messier is the most hated because it's unanimous. Nobody cares about any counter-points.

 

[Steve Kournianos]

Messier is the most hated because it's unanimous. Nobody cares about any counter-points.

He was hated in Vancouver before he got there.

I think it hysterical than an entire fan base is unanimous in hating a guy for the reasons mentioned.

Theo Fleury did coke and never lived up to his contract during failed years in New York. Massive bust. Even when he had a decent year it did nothing in the standings. No playoffs. But Rangers fans don't hate the guy. Maybe booed at the time but not this lifelong hatred.

I don't know. I'm not trying to change people's minds. Go ahead and hate him.

 

[Sonny Lamateena]

Interesting. Kind of goes along with the one article I pulled out from earlier where Messier seemed dismayed by the regular leaks to the media.

You really have to consider the source on all those articles written by the Vancouver beat writers, their is often very little objectivity from people in their position and since it appears the players who were responsible for the leaks were also the ones who were shipped out making it more difficult for the writers to do their jobs you can understand an even greater anti-Messier bias from them. Plus their is so much hate in Vancouver it would be unwise for anyone their to correct any inaccuracies or untruths when it comes to Messier just look at the reaction to the recent Rogers adds, if you lived in that city and worked for a local paper taking any stance that would even be neutral towards Messier would not be a recipe for job security.

 

[DisgruntledGoat*]

... And now, as I've said before, we've reached the point where every 'Messier in Vancouver' threads ends up once the innuendo and rumour is stripped away:

'Whatever, you don't know what was like being a Canuck fan then'

... Which, fine, I don't and don't care. But quit posting already debunked silliness as fact.

 

[DisgruntledGoat*]

no one in vancouver wants to or cares to look at messier's career here objectively. how many times do i have to type "potvin sucks" in this thread?

Except if You started a 'how good was Denis Potvin' thread, you don't typically get a bunch of Ranger fans in there making stuff up to 'prove' he sucked.

* and on the topic of historical objectivity, i don't think messier apologists absolving messier for being a giant suck because the team would have sucked anyway is a particularly rational or objective reason to throw rocks at our deeply-held messier-is-an-albertan-devil mythologies.

Who's absolving him?

'Aging, heavily milaged hockey player plays on bad team and sucks' news at 11.

I mean, I haven't seen a thread yet documenting how awful Doug Gilmour was as a Hawk. Does anyone even remember he was a Hawk?

Again, this whole idea is A) completely blown out of proportion and B) based on proven falsehoods

 

[JA]

Again, this whole idea . . . B) based on proven falsehoods

... Which, fine, I don't and don't care. But quit posting already debunked silliness as fact.

We have confirmation that the descriptions of Messier's conduct in this thread are factual. While previously in this thread perhaps some would have considered his actions and behavior in his time as a Vancouver Canuck only a series of allegations, we have a key voice confirming that all of these things took place.

Pat Quinn confirms Mark Messier was involved with the team's management in 1997-98. These are no longer merely allegations. Quinn was the Canucks' general manager in 1997, and he, of all people, would have witnessed Messier's conduct first-hand.

http://search.proquest.com/docview/384630778

Turning over Leafs with quintessential coach FEATURING: Pat Quinn / Toronto boss Ken Dryden was always preaching newness, then he turned to the stogie-smoking, meat-eating embodiment of old-time hockey.
Gare, Joyce. The Globe and Mail [Toronto, Ont] 04 July 1998: A.15.

...

Quinn had been pushed by ownership, or, more precisely, the owner's minions, to fire coach Tom Renney. Not a few general managers would have given the coach a pink slip simply out of self-preservation -- the "better him than me" plan. Quinn didn't, because he understood that a coaching switch would provide only cosmetic changes, nothing substantial.

"I wouldn't fire the coach," Quinn said. "To have done that would have gone against my better judgment. A lot of things we did in Vancouver I'd second-guess. No problem with that. But increasingly, a lot of decisions were being made that were based on things other than that [my better judgment]."

...

No firing: This would be one time when Quinn tried to impose his better judgment on the direction of the team. The last time, as it turned out.

In a few hours, before the Canucks' next game, in Washington, Quinn would be made aware that his time with the club, not Renney's, was at an end. There was immense disappointment, Quinn would later admit, but also a sense of relief.

...

If there was any doubt about that point, it was clarified when Orca Bay only notionally replaced him for the remainder of the season with Steve Tambellini and Steve Bellringer. Tambellini was a former public-relations flack and Bellringer had but two months of experience as a John McCaw underling.

This wasn't the end of hockey's descent into hell occupied by corporate devils' apprentices. It was just the point where Quinn was pushed off.

...

"There were mixed messages . . . an unmanageable situation really," Quinn said. "In the summer of 1996, ownership was pushing me to cut the payroll. Then the push came to sign Wayne Gretzky. When we weren't able to sign Wayne that summer, [Orca Bay] thought that we needed a name. That meant the next summer the push was to sign Mark Messier."

Messier was supposed to fill a leadership void -- at least that's the way it was imagined by marketing types who had only ever ventured into the Canucks' room for autographs. Messier, in fact, created a leadership void, a space previously occupied by the general manager.

"Messier was consulted by ownership on personnel decisions," Quinn said. "When that happens, it's deadly."

It was a long way from a ticket to Tulsa. Messier's word, not Quinn's, was final. How could Renney coach or Quinn manage a team whose captain had the owner's ear? They couldn't. Soon enough, they weren't.

...

Works Cited

Gare, Joyce. "Turning Over Leafs with Quintessential Coach FEATURING: Pat Quinn / Toronto Boss Ken Dryden was always Preaching Newness, then He Turned to the Stogie-Smoking, Meat-Eating Embodiment of Old-Time Hockey." The Globe and Mail: 0. Jul 04 1998. ProQuest. Web. 7 Nov. 2014 .

The Canucks only won one of their next 12 games and players continued to anonymously leak details about angry confrontations between Keenan and his players. On January 30, in a long article in the Vancouver Sun, Gary Mason revealed more details of discord, describing an incident in which Donald Brashear challenged his coach to duke it out on the bench, and a heated verbal exchange between Odjick and Keenan that was sparked when Keenan sarcastically described Odjick as "one of Pat Quinn's boys."

The revelations didn't sit well with Messier, who kept tabs on what the press was saying by having clippings delivered to him daily. Messier sounded off in an interview with Mason, calling the leaks "completely gutless." He disputed that Keenan's tongue-lashing of Linden in St. Louis was extreme. "Sure, it's tough, but you have to be able to accept criticism and accept the truth." He also denied, as some believed, that he was a GM disguised as a captain. "My allegiance has always been toward the players. I have nothing to do with player personnel on this team or who's going where."

Messier's comments rang hollow. Rather than defend his teammates, he had been silent when Keenan began his verbal assaults, and contrary to his claim of noninvolvement in personnel decisions, Messier actually had considerable input on player moves. As early as training camp, he had talked to Renney about players he felt were of no value to the team. As Quinn told Toronto's Globe and Mail in 1998, "Messier was consulted by ownership on personnel decisions. When that happens it's deadly."

In fact, the entire episode was filled with duplicity, as Keenan himself, rather than his players, had actually been the source of some of the leaks. It appeared Keenan was actually attempting to foster a sense of paranoia and mistrust in order to increase his control. The tactic worked. Alarmed by the dissension, Orca Bay gave Keenan a promotion in late January that gave him the power to make trades. He had become the de facto GM.

At the very least, if we are to consider Messier's time in Vancouver, we need to realize that these are facts. There may have been uncertainty before in this thread, but no longer can that be the case. Pat Quinn was at the very center of the situation.